The present invention relates to an electrical harnessing structure for a vehicle, which structure is arranged on a predetermined vehicle body component of a vehicle and, for example, to an electrical harnessing structure of electrical components for a vehicle, arranged in an instrument panel of the vehicle.
In recent years, vehicle components of an automobile tend to be assembled to a vehicle main body by automatic machines. In this automatic assembling system, an instrument panel located at a front portion in a passenger room, sub assemblies (e.g., a meter node and a switch node) constituting the instrument panel, and the like must be suitable for the automatic assembling operations.
As described in Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 1-190551, the instrument panel is divided into two panel units, i.e., a skeleton instrument panel mount member directly mounted on the vehicle body cowl panel, and an instrument panel core mounted on the instrument panel mount member. Various sub assemblies such as a meter node, a switch node, and the like are assembled to the instrument panel core, thus facilitating the assembling operations.
However, even when the above-mentioned instrument panel structure is adopted, an electrical harnessing structure of electrical components to be arranged in the instrument panel poses problems.
More specifically, in recent years, since the number of electrical components is increased, a wire harness for electrically connecting these components tends to have a large diameter and a large capacity. Therefore, it is not easy to arrange the wire harness, and complicated distributions and connections of electric wires require very difficult operations. In this manner, the arrangement structure in a conventional harness state cannot possibly cope with the above-mentioned automatic assembling operations.
In order to solve this problem, the following attempt is made, as disclosed in, e.g., Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 63-219446. That is, a wire harness itself is hardened to have a fixed pattern using a synthetic resin member so as to form a three-dimensional electrical harnessing member corresponding to a distribution pattern of electric wires. The three-dimensional electrical harnessing member having a fixed pattern is connected in correspondence with an arrangement metal board, which is three-dimensionally arranged according to the shape of an inner surface portion of an instrument panel, connector positions, and the like, so as to attain the automatic assembling operations.
This structure can cope with the automatic assembling operations. However, this structure requires complicated processes for the wire harness. In addition, connector fitting positions do not have a sufficient degree of freedom. Therefore, connector fitting portions are apt to cause decentering unless a molding process is controlled so that all the connector positions have considerably high precision.